Fire It Up

I hear a lot about ‘personal freedoms.’ I hear that ‘the government’ is always trying to take them away. But I don’t hear much about ‘personal responsibilities.’ Is the government always trying to give them to us? It seems so. A new law passed in June aims to regulate the tobacco industry. Cousin to “Big Oil” and stepson to “Big Automotive” (but no relation to Biggie Smalls, AKA the Notorious B.I.G., R.I.P.), “Big Tobacco” has perhaps the largest lobby in Washington, and I’m not talking about the size of their foyer. According to Wikipedia, an infallible source, the tobacco lobby spends over $100,000 every day Congress is in session. Aside from direct contributions, the lobbyists ply politicians with dinner, drinks and dessert. They coerce Congressmen with caviar and champagne. They buy them things is the point I’m trying to make here. But despite their best efforts, these lobbyists have lost a large battle in the war on tobacco. So smoke ’em if you got ’em, because sooner than you think, you’ll notice a change.

The first change you’ll likely notice won’t be the packaging. The price of a pack has already gone up a great deal. In April the federal per pack tax grew to $1.01. That tax will undoubtedly rise, in part to pay for the new Center for Tobacco Products, a division of the FDA. No doubt some tax money will go to help defray the burden tobacco users place on the American healthcare system, especially if we move toward universal coverage. Canada has a universal healthcare plan for it’s citizens, A pack of smokes cost just under ten bucks there. Their thinking is, if people use a product that, when used correctly, results in death, they should pay their own hospital bills, albeit in the form of a hefty tax. Makes sense to me– let the 45 million Americans who do smoke pay for their own lung replacements. Just so long as alcoholics like me can still get free treatment for our cirrhosis of the liver, and so long as a gallon of grain liquor still costs less than a carton of Camels.

But it’s easy for me to be so nonchalant about the tax because I don’t smoke. Well, I did, but not regular cigarettes. I smoked kreteks. Kreteks are made of Indonesian tobaccco and cloves. Invented in the 1880s by a left-handed Java native with a penchant for puns ( I made up two of those descriptors), clove cigarettes were originally intended to treat asthma. The inventor smoked them to cure his chest pain, which the cigarettes did, but before he could patent his creation he died of lung cancer. In Indonesia nine out of ten smokers fire up kreteks, and five out of five dentists agree clove-smokers have pleasant-smelling mouths. It’s as if they just ate a holiday ham.

I still remember the first time I smelled the distinctive scent of a kretek. I was seventeen, so young, dumb, and full of… potential. Justin Hill (you’ve never met him), Patrick Spurlock (you may have met him) and I (you’ve definitely met him) went to Thomasville to see a movie. You have to understand that we lived in Moultrie, so driving thirty minutes to Thomasville just to see a movie is understandable. Standing outside the movie theater, Patrick lit up a Djarum Black. The first thing I noticed was the package– it was larger and squarer than a regular cigarette box, and it was black– how goth. The cigarette itself was black as well– how emo. But black is very slimming, so if you have fat hands consider holding one as an affectation. I noticed
the crackle it made as he pulled his first lung full. Kretek, it tuns out, is onomatopoetic– it describes the sound the cigarette makes.

Years later I would come across cloves again, this time deciding to try them. I think I was at O’Corleys and a friend was smoking Djarums. I bummed one. I was instantly hooked. Finding cloves was tough– most stores have never heard of clove cigarettes. A few independent (read: Indian-owned) stores had them, but they cost a bit more than regular smokes. After alI, they are imported. I soon discovered the rainbow of flavors cloves offered. Besides the Black version, Djarum also has, among others, cherry and vanilla varieties. Recently they’ve become so popular that even Flash Foods carriers them.

But after a short but passionate love affair, I gave up smoking, aside from the occasional clove at the bar. I don’t buy them anymore, only bum them. But the new law will ban them. They’re considered ‘flavored cigarettes’ and in October they’ll be outlawed. The rationale is that candy and fruit flavored cancer sticks are too seductive to kids. As if Mike’s Hard Lemonade isn’t. So I guess my tradition of passing out fruit-flavored White Owls to trick-or-treaters is over. And no more bobbing for cherry Djarums.

Here’s a heads up on the changes you’ll see in the coming year.
* Sept. 20, 2009: Artificial flavors other than menthol banned from cigarettes.
* March 19, 2010: FDA will publish rules and new enforcement plans on prevention of marketing and sales to youth.
* June 22, 2010: FDA will have the authority to issue standards for tobacco products to promote public health that could eliminate or reduce certain ingredients.
* June 22, 2010: Descriptors such as "light" and "mild" prohibited in advertising and labeling of existing cigarette brands.
* June 22, 2010: Prohibition on vending machine sales, self-service displays and free samples of cigarettes and smokeless products except in adult-only facilities.
* June 22, 2010: Advertising in print media and point-of-sale displays must be black-and-white text only.
* June 22, 2010: Larger, stronger warnings required on smokeless tobacco products.
* June 11, 2011: FDA must publish regulations requiring larger, graphic warning labels on cigarette packages; the regulations take effect 15 months later.